Jobs Americans Won’t Trump

by C. Edmund Wright2/29/16
You just can’t make this stuff up. It is beyond ironic and hysterical to boot. I’ll get to why in a moment. First the what: Donald J. Trump, aka Mr. Build The Wall — Mr. Deport Them All — Mr. Make America Great Again — is under this crazy impression that there are certain types of jobs that Americans won’t do. He mentioned specifically some seasonal jobs in South Florida, especially when the economy is hot in those areas.

And being under this impression, while having work to be done at his Mar A Lago project (and elsewhere like the building of Trump Tower), he has resorted to illegal immigrant labor to keep the grass cut, the beds made, the floors vacuumed, to get the tower built, and so on.

But of course, what the hell does Trump know? All he’s done is actually have to get low skilled but necessary grunt work done in the United States of coddled welfare, unemployed hipsters at Starbucks, EBT card holders and Ritalin takers. He sounds like, well, almost every contractor you can find who is involved with the unskilled and semi-skilled labor markets.

Almost every single one of them will tell you the same thing.

But why should we listen to these people when media bigs like Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn and others have mocked this very same this claim about ten thousand times since 2005? After all, a columnist, author, speaker and talk show host — not to mention an internet troll — would certainly know a helluva lot more about hiring at the low end of the labor market than someone who merely does golf courses, towers, lawn maintenance, janitorial services, housekeeping and so on.

Are you laughing yet?

If not, it’s because the irony has not dawned on you as of this moment. Or perhaps — and this is where it starts to get a tad comical — you have been one of those listeners, readers and internet trolls laughing at the notion that there are jobs Americans won’t do, while being one of those over the top Trump supporters since June as well. And it could be that — and this is the really funny part — you are one of those who suddenly got the “jobs Americans won’t do” religion as a result of the Houston Republican debate.

In case you missed it, and I doubt you did — this is the debate where Marco Rubio mocked and embarrassed Trump for having illegals and mostly foreign labor involved with certain aspects of his projects. Trump, apparently unaware of the paradox he was about to step in, insisted that he “hire(s) foreign workers because those are jobs Americans won’t do.”

Yes, he said that. He even repeated it as Rubio pressed the issue. He repeated himself a lot in that debate, frankly — but the salient point is that he was and is standing by the claim that there are jobs Americans won’t do.

To be clear, the point Trump is making is that there are jobs Americans won’t do at a price point that other Americans are willing to pay. I don’t blame consumers for this either; it is each of our responsibility to provide for our families and businesses as cost effectively as we can.

There is of course the claim that the labor market has been driven down by foreign labor — and that’s true to a point. But the bigger perversion is by our own government in the form of absurd welfare and related benefits. So few want to talk about that, or consumer thrift, because nuance and complication are the anathema to demagoguery.

Now while I oppose Trump overall for many, many reasons, I happen to agree with him on this particular point. Let me explain: As a contractor hiring in the low-end labor markets for 23 years this has been my experience as well. I’m talking over ten-thousand job applicants, and only a scant few were anything but Hispanic. Some legal, some illegal, some undetermined (this was all pre e-verify days).

You can rant and rave and flame me all you want, but I lived this for over ten thousand job applicants. Your flame won’t bother me a bit. Besides, Trump. Remember? It’s a place where I think he’s right.

However, I did expect at least a tiny ripple in the ranks over this admission amongst his flock. How could he be so tone deaf? How could he not know that his support base is almost precisely the universe that has pooh-poohed this jobs notion the loudest while supporting mass deportations and jail time for employers the quickest?

Because they most certainly are largely the same group of folks. They are the public figures — as mentioned above — as well as in the masses on the internet.

And yet after the debate, there were two responses from the Trumpophiles everywhere. And the responses did not include throwing Donald in the slammer for hiring illegals. But by God, that damned neighborhood landscaper we use should fry!

What I saw and heard was either total crickets from say Limbaugh, Coulter, Steyn, Hannity and so on. Meanwhile on the internet there was a sudden rash of conversions from Trump trolls to the religion of jobs American’s won’t do. It was quite astonishing.

And yet, I should no longer be flabbergasted. For eight months we have seen on the spot Benny Hinn-type conversions from a belief in property rights to applauding Kelo; conversions from opposing crony capitalism to supporting ethanol; from opposing government health care to we’re gonna take care of everybody; from being strongly pro life to agreeing that Planned Parenthood does many great things; from believing in self responsibility to suddenly applauding the strategic use of bankruptcy; from supporting Matt Bevin against Mitch McConnell to defending Donald for donating to Mitch; and from supporting American energy to calling everyone who does simply beholden to big oil.

And on and on it goes. It’s amazing. It’s a miracle. It’s, well, Trump. And why? Because Trump. And how? Trump!!!

Look, I’ll be honest. If it comes to it — and it looks like it might — I’ll hold my nose, close my eyes and ears, and tamp down the nausea in my gut and vote for Trump over any Democrat. I will. But I will not countenance mental vacancy and total mind-boggling hypocrisy in the name of cultish worship.

So some of you Trump supporters need to get your stories straight. When I have so much as mentioned the realities of low end labor in this country, I have been called a traitor and threatened and been given death and/or jail wishes from the very same people now who are just fine and dandy with Trump hiring foreign workers.

30 Responses to Jobs Americans Won’t Trump

It’s worth pointing out that many of the pundits mocking the notion of “jobs Americans won’t do” have been backing Trump, or at least reporting on him sympathetically. I would also note that there apparently is no field of work in which there aren’t large numbers of American workers (many of whom may be Hispanics, of course). This is one of the arguments against the notion. Of course, it would also help greatly if we didn’t have such high minimum wages for low-skilled labor (which encourages hiring illegal aliens) and other poor economic policies.

I became very concerned about the effect of immigration (legal or illegal) on low-skilled worker employment levels when welfare reform was passed 20 years ago. The idea of the reform was that welfare recipients would have to start working (liberals were very surprised when this actually began to happen), and I wondered how many jobs would be available given high levels of immigration. Note that Trump’s Mar a Lago hotel received hundreds of applications for jobs from Americans, but hired virtually none of them.

I believe it was Milton who said you can NOT have open borders & a welfare state.
(Otherwise you get human waste like the Tsarnev brothers. I actually have to wonder if their mother is still collecting welfare.)

But as a business owner, there is no job I won’t do. I take out the trash. I clean the toilets. I scrub the floors. I answer the phone. I make deliveries. I do estimates. I do design. I make printing plates. I do collating. I do padding. I do the hard work of smoothing over things when something doesn’t come out quite right or a deadline isn’t met. And I make far far less than some kid fresh out of the College of Leftist Indoctrination who takes up a job as Director of Diversity at some health care institution.

And you know what? I’m not going to envy that guy. I have one thing he (or she) doesn’t have: Self-respect and freedom. I can say “Take a hike” to a customer who is a pain. More often, I bend over backwards to make things work because I depend upon people to willingly buy my product. But I do have the freedom to tell someone to take a hike. I have the freedom to tell my boss to go eff himself. (And that would be me talking to myself.) What I don’t have is big bucks. And I don’t want anyone to cry a river of tears for me. (But by all means, click on that little PayPal thingie and send me a small stream of money to keep this site going.)

But what I see going on out there is a pampered class of ninnies who won’t do anything they consider beneath them. We have a bunch of little Richie Riches out there. And I have no respect for law-breakers who cross the border into our country in a de facto invasion. But, god help them, many of these illegals are willing to work. And it’s likely that if this was not the case, there would have been stiffer opposition to this invasion up and down the political spectrum.

I think C. Edmund has put his finger on the pulse of America again. I think many Trump supporters are the little Richie Riches who are pampered and are now pampering themselves with Trump who is yet another politician making lofty promises that he can’t possibly keep. But it all sounds good because everything he said is about the other guy being at fault. It’s not about you, tinkerbell, getting off your ass, quitting with the excuses and your flattering pie-in-the-sky ideology, and making something of yourself despite the obstacles.

To some extent, the dismissal of average Americans by The Ruling Class is somewhat justified, or at least understandable. We have proven ourselves time and again to swallow down their baloney that harms us, and then in effect telling them “Thank you, sir, may I have another.” If I was a politician in DC, it would be very difficult to maintain respect for the average American given the wild baloney they continue to sell us and we continue to buy.

To be fair, the original comic book Richie Rich, as I recall from those occasions when I read it back in the early 60s, wouldn’t have disdained hard work. One of his rich “friends” was the stereotypical spoiled rich kid, but I don’t recall his name.

I looked him up on wikipedia, and it turns out that the spoiled rich kid was actually his cousin, Reginald Van Dough. The comic started in 1960, though the character had appeared several years earlier (Elizabeth remembers him being in the Archie comics). Richie’s best friends were a couple of poor guys (and he wasn’t just slumming).

Incidentally, Michael Barone has an interesting article on Town Hall about immigration and employment. He makes the argument that Arizona has demonstrated that we can accomplish a great deal merely be eliminating incentives for illegal immigration, and also looks at the effect reducing the number of illegals there had on employers and employees. The link is:

The actions which Arizona has taken to reduce the number of illegals have been recommended for years. Unfortunately, only Arizona seems to have had the political situation and will to adopt them.

While the Democrats love to have illegals running around the States as future voters, I have come to the conclusion that business interests are the biggest impediment to “self-deportation” of illegals.

Think the hospitality industry, food industry, custodial industry, landscaping and construction industries. Do not forget that those illegals must stay somewhere and travel to work so the real estate industry and used car business are big supporters of illegals. The list could go on.

With this in mind, I have long advocated arresting and publicly marching out a few company CEO’s in shackles should they be shown to employ illegals. Once several such persons are featured on the 5:30pm news, you can bet others would take note and clean up their businesses.

I only mean he keeps going on TV or giving interviews saying he is going to stay in the race despite the fact that he always finishes 4th or 5th in every primary. That is not good considering only 5 people are now running.

He always makes it sound as if he is vital to the race. I just hope he will find some wisdom and drop out.

Better check again and make sure he’s actually a good surgeon. I mean, the talk is that Kasich is staying in in order to win Ohio and then find a place on Trump’s ticket. But what in God’s name is Carson doing there? Maybe Ron Paul lent him his tin foil hat.

Kung Fu Gent,
I’d value your thoughts on the four propositions that were on the ballot.

As for the rest of this valued group, I’d value any intel on future primary votes and/or proposition votes. (I actually counted 50 utterances on pole numbers on the radio with 0 commentary on ballot issues. That’s bullshit.)

Prop 4 sounds nice but it doesn’t say how to assert the 10th amendment and get the federal government out of state business.

I think prop 1 which calls to do away with the property tax and replace it with something other than an income tax will be the most controversial. I have always hated property tax other than a one time fee. Giving the government the right to tax real property on a yearly basis gives them partial ownership in perpetuity. The question is how to make up the shortfall in taxes to fund schools and other local functions.

At 10:15, nothing has changed in those allocations. Rubio has run very close in Virginia but narrowly trails Cruz in Georgia. Texas is going handily to Cruz (41% at present), and Arkansas is close to a 3-way tie. Kasich is doing well in New England, and Rubio has an early lead in Minnesota. Carson is 4th or 5th everywhere, and I agree that it’s long past time for him to quit.

ADDENDUM: Trump has been projected to win in Arkansas and Slick Hilly in the People’s Democratic Republic of Taxachusetts (narrowly). Trump has a narrow lead in Vermont but it hasn’t been called. Cruz is 2nd in Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas as well as Georgia, though some of these results could still change.

Well, Cruz didn’t do as well as he originally hoped, but probably better than was expected a few days ago. Rubio still leads in Minnesota, with Cruz second and Trump third (which might be the only place all year he’s come in worse than second). Trump hasn’t done as well as the polls seemed to say, partly because late deciders went mainly to Bubio and then Cruz.

ADDENDUM: Karl Rove pointed out that Republican turnout remains high. In Virginia, Trump and Rubio each got more votes than everyone got in 2012 and Cruz almost as many.

ADDENDUM: With virtually all votes in, Rubio did pull barely ahead of Cruz in Georgia but continued to trail him in Alabama and Arkansas. Kasich has a very narrow lead over Rubio for 2nd in Taxachusetts. It looks like Rubio will be shut out in the delegate hunt in Alabama and Texas

David, for me there is mental sanity in knowing that a great con is being perpetrated upon us. I no longer ball up my fists and get angry that your average low information voter doesn’t get it or that there is a political class drunk on their own kool-aid. The natural state of man seems to be self-delusion and corruption, thus we should not let it shock us and instead we should take note of those things that take a step beyond the normal crud.

To me, Cruz is that step. And conversant with a recent article, his relative lack of corruption makes a whole lot of people angry. It’s a very alarming thing therefore that the supposed reformer (Trump) can say little more about Cruz than that he is a liar. Either Trump will do and say anything for power, or he really is not the reform candidate that so many are hoping for.

Politics is the art of ritualized lying. Politics is the focal point for kool-aid. To insert integrity into the political process is as large of a task as getting oil and water to mix. That’s just the way it is. That, to a large extent, is why the Constitution is set up with so many specific limits on government. We need government and we need politicians, but not too much of them, thank you.

What the Left has successfully done is rope-a-doped people and get them eternally hyped up on grievance, on a radical and overbearing sense of justice, and on blame-shifting. The Left is a cancer in any society it touches. And we’re at the point in American history where we’re long past the tipping point. Just as many “Christians” are phony-baloney Christians, this is becoming increasingly true of conservatives.

I’m not saying 100% orthodoxy or purity is the thing that is needed. But we do need to stop playing the game of being lied to and accepting the framework of these lies as the starting point for our own discussions.

I’m often *this close* some days to reforging this site in such a way as to exclude politics. Politics has become so corrupt, little good seems to come from the discussion of them. I’d rather spend whatever time I have on this earth discussing good books or movies.

But we martial on, trying to insert a little sanity into the culture. But it’s an uphill battle. Lies are so common now.

I have to disagree with the author here: I think Trump’s retreat from his tough stance on immigration is going to hurt him with his supporters. The only reason there hasn’t been more damage is that, as from the beginning, Trump’s opponents are weak (and at this point, also few) and that Trump’s own position keeps fluctuating so no one can say what he stands for. Notice that neither Rubio nor Kasich is in any position to make hay out of Trump’s “evolution” on the H1-B visa question, for instance, because they’re both pro-Amnesty and in general pro-mass-immigration.

That leaves us with Cruz. From the beginning, Cruz has handled the immigration issue badly. His campaign was better-managed than, say, Scott Walker’s, but he failed to get out in front of this issue, which was a hanging curve ball over the middle of the plate, leaving Trump an obvious opening which he was quick to exploit. Cruz should now be hammering Trump on his signature immigration issue, positioning himself well to Trump’s Right, instead of joining Marco Rubio in heaping largely irrelevant insults on him.

I’m going to take issue with the author on another point as well:

“As a contractor hiring in the low-end labor markets for 23 years this has been my experience as well. I’m talking over ten-thousand job applicants, and only a scant few were anything but Hispanic. Some legal, some illegal, some undetermined (this was all pre e-verify days).

That does not mean there are jobs Americans won’t do; it means there are jobs Americans won’t do at Mexican wage rates. That’s why you had only Hispanic applicants. But don’t worry, Edmund – if I and other Conservatives can manage to get sane immigration policies enacted, you won’t have that problem any longer because these people are going back home where they belong. You will face ruinous penalties if you knowingly hire illegal aliens, and legal immigration from poor countries will be vastly reduced.

You can raise your wages to American standards, move your business to Mexico, or close up shop – frankly, I don’t care much which, but your days of being able to depress American wages and increase American unemployment by importing alien laborers must come to an end if we’re going to go on being a real country and not just a piece of real estate between two oceans.

One wonders if anyone truly believes that anyone will (as we should) show these illegal aliens the true “pathway to citizenship” (which is to send them on the path and back to where they are already citizens). I don’t.

Trump’s waffle shows he’s not serious. I never thought he was. He’s rope-a-doping us like every other Establishment Republican has. Sounds nice on the campaign trail, but he’ll never follow through.

That does not mean there are jobs Americans won’t do; it means there are jobs Americans won’t do at Mexican wage rates.

All I can do is offer an anecdote. I’ll never forget the restauranteur who told me how difficult it was to find waiters and waitresses. Many were interested in the job until they heard the term “minimum wage.” Despite the fact that they could make oodles from tips, so few of these little Richy Riches wanted to start at the bottom.

One anecdote (and dozens of others I’ve read about since then) do not a truism make. But I do believe Wright is telling us truthfully what he has experienced. I don’t believe that most of the little precious American snowflakes will do those jobs. They’re too pampered. My father’s generation was the generation where they were working hard at the age of twelve, and going from odd job to odd job until coming into a full time one. My father died mowing the lawn (with a manual mower…part of the problem, perhaps) in his seventies.

Now most kids sit home and play video games. It doesn’t excuse committing a felony and crossing the border. But I’m reasonably convinced that it’s not just a matter of wages. The illegal aliens will often indeed do the jobs that Americans won’t do. Sucks to look into the mirror sometimes.

Granted, cheap third-world labor (whether illegally imported here or from jobs taken abroad) has an effect on the marketplace. And we ought not to shoot ourselves in the foot by importing the problem. But even if you got rid of every illegal alien, you’d still likely have a shortage of labor. Remember, this is the sissified generation who is now demanding a $15/hour minimum wage. We are not cranking out the kinds of kids who will do a paper route for nickels and dimes.

Well, I don’t think the waiters/waitresses here in Louisville that we’ve encountered tend to be Hispanics. Our waitress at Frisch’s this evening was a black speaking fluent English, and the woman at the cash register was a white speaking fluent English. Of course, we do have plenty of Mexican restaurants, and they are much likelier to have Hispanic staff. I also doubt that much of the farm labor in rural Kentucky is Hispanic (a cousin of ours has the family farm, which was named Shady Lane Farm after my father’s West Point nickname; perhaps I should ask about this when next we visit, probably at Memorial Day).

I’m not saying today’s kids aren’t being raised with a bad attitude (due to the cultural forces we fight here at ST!), but there’s more to it than that: there is a concerted effort among the global elitists to eliminate the American “wage premium,” in other words, to reduce American wages down to third-world levels. Now, I have a problem with this, and with short-sighted, greedy companies that would destroy this entire country for their short-term benefit by importing alien labor.

It’s not just kids we’re talking about here: coolie labor from Mexico is accelerating the destruction of the black family as black men can’t find employment or are reduced to working for minimum wage. The increase in H2-B visas will make their lives even more miserable. People like you and I are being affected by H1-B visas as aliens are being imported to take away more skilled jobs. And of course Obamacare and other government programs and regulations reduce employment and wages by making employees more expensive. You and I, Brad, are ourselves having a very had time of making a go of it in this economy, and there’s no reason it should be this way.

Americans aren’t wrong to feel angry about all this, or to sense what the more politically/culturally astute of us know: that there are business interests colluding with politicians who have sold us out. And that anger is what has fueled the rise of Trump.

there is a concerted effort among the global elitists to eliminate the American “wage premium,” in other words, to reduce American wages down to third-world levels.

Sucks to have a global market. And that is ultimately what Americans are competing against. Illegal aliens just exacerbate the situation. But ultimately there is no wall to build against the global market other than scraping our public schools and replacing them with a system that can guarantee a very high standard of education. Higher education needs to be gutted and rebuilt as well. Because that’s what it will take. If we can’t compete in the low-wages/high-labor market, we have to lead in other areas. And neither learning to become a “world citizens” or becoming skilled in “gender studies” will cut it.

As Rush was telling one caller who wondered if Trump could get Apple to open an iPhone factory in the U.S., Rush told him that was impossible unless you wanted to buy iPhones for $2500.00 instead of $100.00. He said that there are factories in China that have 500,000 people — so big they have entire hospitals built in.

We can’t do that here. And although there’s no doubt that business wants to maximize efficiency (including keeping labor costs down), this is nothing new. That big business is too cozy with government is a problem. That’s nothing new either.

Americans should be angry about a lot of things, including our bad public schools, the invasion of illegal aliens, political correctness, our national debt and deficit, pointless wars against “the religion of peace” (and I think there can be pointed wars), feminism-run-wild (and the subsequent marginalization of men), the homosexualization of society, the growth of government regulation, and just the overall job-killing nonsense of environmental wacko-ism and global warming.

But few — including the supposedly politically incorrect Donald Trump — are willing to take on this whole package of job-killing issues. I’m all for kicking every single illegal alien out of the country. But in many ways, these illegals are merely a symptom of bigger problems.

Sucks to have a global market. And that is ultimately what Americans are competing against.

Absolutely correct!! I recall the moment this was hit home to me in the early-mid 1980’s and I knew Americas were not going to be prepared for it. Ant that was before the great opening up of China.

It is extremely difficult to compete with third world countries as regards production of many basic products. Particularly with shipping costs are relatively low.

Generally speaking, Americans are not willing to work as hard as or live in conditions acceptable to third worlders.

Just as importantly, technological progress has reduced the number of hands required to produce products and services in this country. How often does anyone get a live voice at the other end of the phone line when calling a business? How many bookkeepers are no longer adding up numbers due to computers? A few decades back it took hundreds of people to produce a million tons of steel. Now I know of mills which require fewer than fifty due to automation and computers.

That is not to say the immigrants are pushing down the wages in our country; they are particularly in the service area. But I think a more basic change is taking place. The huge influx of immigrants into the country is changing the culture. One of the ways it is doing so is that young people do not appear to be taking part time jobs the way they used to. These jobs not only helped put money in these kids pockets, but they also helped teach them the value and necessity of work. They learned discipline as well.

Bill of Rights

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III

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Amendment IV

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Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

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Amendment VII

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